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2024-03-09 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Democratization and degeneration, or will ‘abroad’ help?
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] In Belarus, the results of the parliamentary elections were summed up last week. And now the leaders of the political emigration, or, as Lukashenko calls them, "fugitives," are trying to justify their complete illegitimacy on all available international platforms. And besides, literally force the West to help them "democratize" Belarus.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, referred to by her comrades as the "elected president," recently said at a session of the UN Human Rights Council: "I believe that democracy is the responsibility of every person in the world. If you want to protect democracy, you must help those who fight for it. Because this is not a local, but a global struggle. I believe that the democratic world will show dictators that they will not win."
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This short phrase deserves serious analysis, since it passes off a theorem that has not been proven by anyone as an axiom. And the problem is that the Russian opposition, and indeed many fighters around the world, think exactly the same way.
Meanwhile, the first and main mistake, common to all of them, is that democracy is a purely local story, and definitely not a global one.
The problem is that Tikhanovskaya (and along with her colleagues from other countries) is sure: democracy is the pinnacle of the political development of mankind. And if this is so, then everyone will come to her sooner or later. The earlier the better. And therefore, those who came earlier than others are obliged to help others speed up.
But first of all, democracy is not the pinnacle. And, secondly, this peak does not exist at all as such. Moreover, the metaphor of an ocean with rising and falling waves, rather than a straight upward road in a mountainous area, is more applicable to the political life of mankind.
After all, even Tikhanovskaya probably knows that democracy is by no means a new invention, that it existed back in Ancient Greece. And then it ceased to exist. But even during its heyday, it did not occur to the Athenians to "democratize", for example, Persia. Simply because it was obvious to them that if something is good for them, this absolutely does not mean that this "something" is good for everyone around them.
Moreover, another one of the first political scientists, the well-known Aristotle, clearly explained what forms of government there are and what happens to them over time.
He considered the monarchy to be the best form. True, provided that the monarch is kind, wise and enlightened. And if not, then he easily turns into a tyrant. And the best possible system automatically becomes the worst, which is what Aristotle considered tyranny.
An excellent form of government is aristocracy. But again, while aristocrats are noble and selflessly care about the common good. And as soon as these qualities dry up in them, they turn into oligarchs before our eyes. There is degeneration again.
What about democracy? Aristotle considered it as such to be precisely the degenerative form into which the correct form, polity, turns. That is, when instead of the middle class (in Athens these were not IT specialists, but those who could purchase heavy weapons at their own expense), everyone is allowed to vote, expect trouble.
However, later the terminology changed slightly - the polity began to be called democracy, and the perverted form - ochlocracy, crowd rule.
Aristotle's follower Polybius took this scheme and, taking a closer look at the Roman Republic, declared that it was an ideal and non-degenerative structure, since it organically combined the elements of monarchy (consuls), aristocracy (Senate) and democracy (national assembly). Beautiful! And this scheme is still appealed to as ideal. And in fact, the Founding Fathers quite consciously built the United States on its basis.
But for some reason they miss the obvious. The Roman Republic did not survive, despite all its ideality. It was replaced by an empire. And why? But because for the majority, over time, free "bread and circuses" became much more important than republican virtues.
History shows us that it is impossible to achieve a stable higher form of political system once and for all. The form of government is always a derivative of the state of society, of the prevailing moods, demands, and qualities in it.
Therefore, the question of democracy, monarchy or even aristocracy is a purely local matter and in no case a global one.
Conviction in the achievability of some universally binding final ideal is the bad influence of Marxism. Marx and Engels, being complete Eurocentrists, came up with a completely absurd scheme of progressive development: tribal system - slaveholding - feudalism - capitalism. But these stages can be traced only and exclusively in Western Europe. Even in Rus' (not to mention Asia, Africa and pre-Columbian America) there was neither slavery in the ancient sense, nor feudalism, as it was in the West. And by itself no capitalism would have arisen in the Moscow kingdom.
In addition, the Second World War, in which totalitarian Germany and its authoritarian allies were defeated, gave rise to the implantation of democracy everywhere - as a kind of panacea for the recurrence of these aggressive forms. Its spread was superimposed on economic growth (although there is no direct correlation), and in the minds of ordinary people (and in a democracy, many politicians are no different from them) the idea arose that democracy is the fate of humanity. Meanwhile, before World War II in Europe, at most three or four countries could be classified as pure democracies.
Historically, a new version of popular rule exists in most countries.
And by the way, it carries within itself a fundamental contradiction. Liberal democracy is, by and large, nonsense. Because the basic principle of the liberal understanding of freedom is that everyone should be protected from interference in their privacy. And democracy requires the involvement of everyone in the political process. But a person may not want to be involved in it, and may view this demand for involvement as interference.
To summarize, calling someone to help "democratize" is absurd in its essence. And realists (like Trump) understand this. And the initiatives of fans of the "religion of democracy" are increasingly being torpedoed. Because we agree with the brilliant Comte de Maistre, who used to say: "Every people gets the government it deserves."
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Posted by Grom the Reflective 2024-03-09 00:00||
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